dates to around 1780. Owners More than twelve generations of the Avery family have resided in the Avery Homestead. The original house was constructed about 1696 by William Morgan, around the time of his marriage to Margaret Avery. The two were descendants of James Morgan and James Avery respectively. The house passed to Deacon William Morgan Jr. who used the house to conduct church services from 1726, when North Groton became a separate parish, and lasted until the completion of a meetinghouse. Deacon William Morgan Jr. sold the house to John Wood in 1745. Nine years would pass before it would be reacquired by the Avery family in 1754. Theophilus Avery, the first, owned the house from 1757 to 1798. The second Theophilus Avery possessed the house from 1852 to 1880. Amos G. Avery acquired the house in 1946 from his father. In 1970, Amos Avery donated 100 acres of land to the Mashantucket Land Trust and kept the surrounding 40 acres. Amos Avery also restored the house to a "more or less" 18th-century appearance through a decade-long restoration effort. The restoration effort began in the mid-1950s when he poked a hole in the ceiling and felt the molding, spurring his desire to see what was underneath. The ceiling was removed and the room was restored and then it moved to the next room. Avery removed plaster off the fireplaces, replaced the wide floor boards and replicated the wainscotting. Upon Amos Avery's death in July 1998, aged 96, the house passed to his oldest son Edward. Many historical artifacts were put up for auction, including 12 wicker baskets of Mohegan or Pequot origin, which were bid on by the Mashantucket Pequot Museum. Importance The Avery Homestead is historically significant as a "rare survival of a late-seventeenth and early eighteenth-century farmstead, a significance enhanced by the exceptional integrity of its rural setting. The picturesque interrelationship of the house, farmyard, and outbuildings, which is set off by the broad sweep of the associated pasture and crop land, is especially evocative of eighteenth-century lifeways." Believed to be the oldest building in Ledyard, the Avery Homestead is marked by its fine craftsmanship and state of preservation. The Avery Homestead is also historically important due to its ties to the Avery family. The Avery family has owned the house for three centuries save for a brief nine-year period, from 1745 to 1754. The Avery Homestead